This post was produced by Open Media Miami, an independent company that works in partnership with Beached Miami to cover neighborhood news along the Biscayne Corridor.

When the words “hacker” and “government” make it into the same sentence, it usually involves an illegal security breach by a faceless cadre of e-saboteurs. Not so in Miami this weekend, when a group of computer programmers will be battling for cash prizes in an event sponsored by the Miami Downtown Development Authority.

The 24-hour tournament, dubbed HackDay Miami, will take place this weekend at MiamiShared, a communal office space inside the Biscayne 900 building in downtown Miami. The 40 programmers chosen will compete for $10,000 in cash prizes and the chance to present their phone application in front of venture capitalists and investors at Florida International University’s 2011 Americas Venture Capital. The Miami DDA is dishing out $1,500 in cash for the hacker that develops the best app to assist people in avoiding traffic jams by finding alternative routes when the downtown bridges are up.

“This event is a great opportunity to bring together the greatest technology minds of South Florida and challenge them to conceptualize and build new services within an intense and sleepless 24-hour period,” HackDay Foundation founder Demian Bellumio said in a statement.

Both FDOT and Tri-Rail have proposals to bring passenger rail to Miami on the Florida East Coast Railway.

This post was produced by Open Media Miami, an independent company that works in partnership with Beached Miami to cover neighborhood news along the Biscayne Corridor.

With two government transportation agencies pushing hard for an expansion of passenger rail in South Florida, a new commuter train may soon be chugging through downtown Miami.

As reported by El Nuevo Herald, the Florida Department of Transportation recently proposed a short-term plan to start a passenger route from downtown to Fort Lauderdale using the Florida East Coast Railway, which runs parallel to U.S. 1 (Biscayne Boulevard/Brickell Avenue) in Miami-Dade County and is currently being revamped to transport cargo. The FDOT plan calls for six stations along the route and would cost around $300 million.

The department’s long-term goal is a regional route from Miami to Jupiter, which in total could cost $1 billion, FDOT’s mobility development manager Amie Goddeau said during a town hall meeting on Oct. 18.

At the same time, the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (SFRTA), the agency that manages Tri-Rail, is pushing its own proposal for an expansion of the FEC railway. The Transportation Authority says its plan to connect Miami to Jupiter via passenger rail would cost $270 million — $730 million less than FDOT’s — and take between three and five years to complete.

“We believe this new [plan] is superior to FDOT’s approach, as it can be implemented quickly … provides better regional service coverage, and will not require any additional county or FDOT operating funds,” SFRTA transportation planning manager Joe Quinty told Transit Miami.